Over the six years I worked at Harbourfront Centre I promoted hundreds of concerts, art openings, literary events and even a ferris wheel that you sat in cars instead of the usual seats. Music highlights for me included a working afternoon with dynamo diva Angelique Kidjo as well as singing/dancing at concerts by Billy Bragg, Los Lobos, Feist, Seun Kuti and many more. It was an idyllic place to work.

I had an opportunity while I was there to program some events and I loved working on them. The DJ Skate Nights, at their awesome outdoor rink, have now been going strong for almost 15 years. I had a hand in creating this idea with my colleague Mike Taylor (who started them) and programmed a season of the nights. My suggestions for fine tuning the nights led to the format they now use (which is gratifying to know that they succeeded so well from my advice). 

The year I programmed the DJ nights (where DJs of all styles play sets for the skaters) involved a fun concept with the actors from the Degrassi TV series. The only downer was that one of the cast, this guy Drake, was too busy to join them.

The other night I helped start, which ran for quite a few years afterwards, was a Valentine’s Day event with the Cherry Bomb party crew of Denison Benson and Cozmic Cat. There was some hesitancy before it happened if a club night could be an outdoor DJ skate, but it worked big time!

I have collaborated with Denise Benson on a few events and she is such a joy to work with creatively and always mixes up some damn fine head spinning booty shaking music. Denise (also a well known writer/journalist) wrote an insightful and entertaining book about Toronto nightlife you should check out.

In 2004, I was able to program three intertwined live events for the larger Superdanish festival at Harbourfront Centre. These concerts blended DJs, emcees and artists from Toronto and Denmark together on stage.

The synergy of presenting them at Revival and being able to program great Toronto artists I worked with previously like King Sunshine, Abs & Fase and Denise Benson with Danish talent worked out so well and was professionally satisfying to me on a number of levels. It was unusual for Harbourfront Centre to do events off-site so I was grateful for the chance and happy with the results.